Jennifer Muir over at the Orange County Register reports that the Board of Supervisors will be considering a new course in dealing with the mess that Supervisor Moorlach pushed them into. After Supervisor Moorlach pushed the Board in between an ideological rock and a hard place over a Planned Parenthood health education contract in March; it looks like calmer heads may prevail.
The board previously directed that the Health Care Agency suspend the subcontract portion of a clinic support grant funded with Tobacco Settlement Revenues going to Planned Parenthood. Whil none of the grant was used for abortion related services, Supervisor Campbell jumped on Moorlach’s bandwagon stating that he would never support funding an organization that performs abortions. It did not matter to him that the funding in question paid for health education services for women and was in no way used to support abortion services. It did not matter that millions of dollars of county funds are paid each year to hospitals and clinics that also provide abortion services.
It appears the solution that staff has created is to not fund health education services with the portion Tobacco Settlement funds dedicated to support community clinics. While health education is a critical part of patient care, people needing clinic services will only get some of their immediate health needs addressed, while methods of prevention will be ignored.
Even though the Board refuses to admit that their decision in March was likely unlawful, at least calmer heads have helped the Supervisors craft a solution that doesn’t require them to cancel more that $50 million in health care contracts in order to not fund one organization for needed community services.
We’ll be watching on Tuesday, to see what the final solution looks like. In the meantime, here is the link to Jennifer Muir’s story in the Register.
Kudos to the OC Health Care Agency for injecting some common sense into this whole mess.
Planned Parenthood provides a vital service to the people of Orange County who, without a county hospital, depend on safety net health care providers for primary care and are doing so in larger and larger numbers as the economy continues to decline.